Optimizing Leadership [3.5]

[Tokuhara]

Well folks... The dwarf build is defunct. DM wants to avoid the World of Warcraft sourcebook.

So my new goal (hopefully I can keep this sucker) is the idea of "Optimizing Leadership" to basically run a small nation. So, I know realistically of 5 feats I can take from Heroes of Battle (I'd like to avoid Undead Leadership due to the party's Dread Necromancer having an undead horde).

My idea was to be a t1 class with a powerhouse cohort and followers who likely will be crafting items for me and my cohort so I can throw WBL out the window.

My followers will all be Master Craftsmen or Artificers, my Cohort will likely be a melee monster (unless someone has a synergetic Caster/Caster combo)

Any ideas folks?

[Gavinfoxx]

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa...p?topic=3065.0

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa...p?topic=8817.0

[Tokuhara]

So from those messes of text, I gathered that Cleric is dang good as a Leadership master.

So some kind of Leader of Men Cleric build, a Cohort who wrecks people's days, and my Magic Item sweatshop.

[rweird]

What level, I presume Epic, because leadership has a cap otherwise, unless you want to get into the dragonwrought can of worms, though that would be cheesy. If you don't have epic, the most people you really could command is ~300, unless you leadership chain (cohort takes leadership, cohort's cohort takes leadership, etc.) Dragon Cohort could help buff your cohort at high levels (dragonwrought kobold t1 or the like, the boost to Class Levels could make it a leadership spiral, and you could get into high epic with a chain, though that is as cheesy as it gets pretty much).

Also, I'd like to point out a much ignored leadership rule: Followers have NPC classes, though the ELH has ways for them to get PC classes, it is around +4 effective levels so you could have a 1st level artificer, or a 5th level expert, meaning you'd need a really high leadership score to get a bunch of crafters that can meet CL requirements.

[Tokuhara]

1-20 for the character, All books from 3.5 including Dragon Magazine & 3rd Party.

I'm only using 3 leadership feats (Leadership, Extra Followers, Improved Cohort) which collectively give me a Cohort at my level -1 and x2 followers as per Leadership.

My idea is to be a High Charisma 0LA Race Dynamic Priest Cloistered Cleric with a Face-Kicker of a Cohort and a Money-Making enterprise/Item Sweatshop

[Phelix-Mu]

Followers that don't adventure don't have an unlimited source of experience to burn crafting. It's different for cohorts, and if you can arrange artificers, then they can dismantle items and use their craft reserve. The latter strategy cuts back on the profitability, though. The DM can and should make sure that you have to jump through all of the hoops to make said sweatshop (if it was easy, everyone would do it, and magic items would be so common that they wouldn't be worth much more than normal weapons).

The Leadership chain is very exploitable, though entirely up to the DM. I allowed one of my players to do it once he took Epic Leadership, though I was designing his potential recruits, so I still had him on a pretty tight leash.

Dragon Cohort is very good. I'd argue it is better than some of the feats from Heroes of Battle, especially once you get to the top of that chart, or if your DM lets you pick from higher level ones as the campaign continues (which your DM probably shouldn't allow).

Legendary Leader is extremely, crazily strong. At that point, you really do have a nation of followers.

As for npc classes, at higher levels they aren't as terrible as it might sound. A 15th level expert is pretty cool, though definitely not as cool as an equivalent artificer.

There are a number of feats from Dragon Magazine, too. Here are two of the ones I liked.

Spoiler

Show

CLASS CHAMPION [GENERAL]
Superior renown brings two elite members of your class to
serve you.
Prerequisites: Leadership, character level 6th, leadership
score 4 higher than your level.
Benefit: You gain a permanent +1 bonus to your
Leadership score. You gain two additional followers of the
highest level available for your leadership score. These extra
followers must be of the same class as you. If you have more
than one standard class, they must only share one class with
you, but they most both be of the same class. If you lose these
followers you can replace them through the normal means,
gaining up to two new followers of the highest level of
followers you're able to recruit.
Normal: You typically may only recruit followers up to the
limit allowed by your Leadership score.
Dragon Magazine #: 346 (Supporting Cast – Following the
Leader)
CLOSE COHORT [GENERAL]
Your cohort is almost your equal.
Prerequisites: Leadership, character level 6th, leadership
score 2 higher than your level.
Benefit: Your cohort may be one level lower than you.
Normal: Regardless of your leadership score, you can
only recruit a cohort who is two or more levels lower
than you. Your cohort cannot gain levels to bring him
within one level of you.
Dragon Magazine #: 346 (Supporting Cast –
Following the Leader)

[Tokuhara]

My DM didn't ban Leadership, but he banned that feat, along with Wild Cohort. Thus...

I have to make a purse out of a pig here.

The Magic Sweat Shop idea is there to basically print money, if you will. They make cheap items (swords, etc) that can be mass-produced (remember: at Leadership 25, I have 270 level 1, 26 level 2, 14 level 3, 8 level 4, 4 level 5, and 4 level 6 followers, or 326 total followers ranging from levels 1-6 as opposed to the standard 163 followers) and any items that I or my cohort need, they then spend XP from craft reserves/aid another to make the items I want for myself/cohort.

[Gavinfoxx]

Orc Cloistered Cleric, maybe? With Leadership, Extra Followers, Assemble the Horde, Might Makes Right, things like that?

[Tokuhara]

Orc Cloistered Cleric, maybe? With Leadership, Extra Followers, Assemble the Horde, Might Makes Right, things like that?

Minus I lose charisma the Orc Route, basically. Plus, I'm pretty sure Orcs don't Assemble the Horde for a Sweatshop...

[Tokuhara]

On a completely unrelated question, one player wants to play a Rogue 4/Swashbuckler 6/Dread Pirate 10 with a hook hand and cutlass. He plans on being a TWF Guy with a cutlass and a hook for a hand. What would the damage of the hook be?

[Gavinfoxx]

Hook is in Dragon Magazine 318.

Simple melee weapon, light, 1d4/x4, piercing, can't be disarmed.

Cutlass is in stormwrack, martial melee, light, 1d6, 19-20/x2, slashing, +2 to resist being disarmed.

[Tokuhara]

Hook is in Dragon Magazine 318.

Simple melee weapon, light, 1d4/x4, piercing, can't be disarmed.

Groovy. He'll be happy to have a Masterwork hook hand that he can use as a decent weapon he can smack a fool with his hook and run 'em through with his cutlass. I forsee him causing a lot of hilarity in a Horror Campaign

[TypoNinja]

The Power of Power of Faerûn book has some more leadership options if your followers are going to be something other than just a typical standing army. Things like establishing colonies. If you are doing that, your followers will bring their families with them. So you don't directly control the family, but its an economic base you have significant influence over.

It also has rules expanding the number of followers, most importantly it 'un-epics' the epic leadership table. While your base leadership score is still capped at under 21st level, your modified leadership score gets uncapped allowing you to take advantage of the epic tables for numbers of followers.

Best way to do that is to take Might Makes Right and a high strength monstrous race. Then its time to assemble the horde.

[Gavinfoxx]

Minus I lose charisma the Orc Route, basically. Plus, I'm pretty sure Orcs don't Assemble the Horde for a Sweatshop...

You don't need a sweatshop to mass produce magic items. really.

I have a handbook for this sort of thing. Read it!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...Je09i8KWw/edit

[Tokuhara]

But you see the goal, right?

With having a sweatshop, I can keep the gold rolling into my purse and be able to buy whatever items I want (like say a nation)

[Gavinfoxx]

But you see the goal, right?

Did you even read my document and the associated links??

[herrhauptmann]

Best way to do that is to take Might Makes Right and a high strength monstrous race. Then its time to assemble the horde.

+1.
Orc is +4str? Halfminotaur is another +12 on a base medium character?
All that, for a what, +2 LA?
Getting a +16 charisma is pretty hard to do with that little LA.

[ShadowFireLance]

Do any of you even know what Might Makes right does?
IT ADDS YOUR STR SCORE TO (in additon to CHA) Your leadership score...
Yeesh

[Tokuhara]

I did read the document and my head was hurting. The format wasn't user-friendly

And here's how I get a good charisma:

Start with an 18
Race with +2
Unseelie Fae for another +2
Magic Blooded for yet another +2

End result is a 24 before class advancement. By level 6, I have a 25 Charisma, which is a +7 modifier, which combined with items and further advancement is sufficient corny leadership needs.

[toapat]

End result is a 24 before class advancement. By level 6, I have a 25 Charisma, which is a +7 modifier, which combined with items and further advancement is sufficient corny leadership needs.

I could barely make a passable bag of Microwave popcorn with that ammount of Meh you are using.

Bigger things can be done with 2 Paladin/2 blackguard. And cheese was to be had in plenty with Wilder 10/Thrallherd 10.

[Mithril Leaf]

+1.
Orc is +4str? Halfminotaur is another +12 on a base medium character?
All that, for a what, +2 LA?
Getting a +16 charisma is pretty hard to do with that little LA.

Half Minotaur Lloth-Touched Magic-Blooded Water Orc is ummmm...
+22 Str, -2 Dex, +14 Con, -4 Int, -4 Wis +0 Cha.
For +2 LA.

[TypoNinja]

Half Minotaur Lloth-Touched Magic-Blooded Water Orc is ummmm...
+22 Str, -2 Dex, +14 Con, -4 Int, -4 Wis +0 Cha.
For +2 LA.

Assuming you can squeak out ALL the bonuses to leadership score This would provide you with;

Level+Cha mod = Base score +

+6 from the DMG bonuses
+12 from PoF bonuses.
+22 from might makes right

For an effectively leadership score of Level+cha+40.

Thats 1000 first level followers before level+cha mod. Double it for extra followers.

Assuming your minimum level 6th and a 0 cha mod you've still just left the epic chart behind and hit "If you are going to twink this hard, do the math yourself jackass" territory. Always a good feeling :D

Lets bust out assemble the horde to pile on some more.

And we still haven't covered HoB or Dragon Mag shenanigans :D Pretty sure there's a flat +4 leadership score feat somewhere, plus another one to double your first level followers.

Remember your base score (Level + Cha mod) is limited to 25. But your Effective score is not.

[Socratov]

If leadership is your goal (and thus as many followers as possible) then this is what you do:

Human Bard 10/Warchanter 10
Feats: leadership, Improved cohort, Extra followers
Pump Charisma and leadershipscore increasing effects
Dragon fire Inspiration (lvl 1) (try to make it sonic)
ACF for lvl 6 class feature Song of the Heart
ACF Healing Hymn
Lingering Song
Your cohort is another bard DFI with other element (different elements stack)

...(furhter IC optimization, get more bards high level if you need them use alphorn for reach of effect)

then

Every follower of lvl 6 or higher (including cohort) gets leadership of his own
High level followers (no cohort) are casters, low level (lvl<=2) followers are lion totem barbarians with powerattack

You let your casters buff up your army and counterspell, you use your warchanter capstone granting everyone lvl 20 bab (including iteratives), let your bard cohort and you DFI and inspire courage, full powerattack with charge and punce => barbarian horde behaving like blenders

Congratulations, You now have an almost unstoppable army of just about infinite (? too lazy to do calculations like these) persons attacking like they are lvl 20 (or highest level available) and hitting for massive damage. You have now broken the game that is DnD

EDIT: I forgot to add a TL;DR - Instead of having people follow you around that don't really do anything, make them into competent fighters so you can actually use them effectively. It's not the number that counts, but what they can do, else they will all fall without doing something, and dieing peepz lowers your leadershipscore.

[Darius Kane]

It also has rules expanding the number of followers, most importantly it 'un-epics' the epic leadership table. While your base leadership score is still capped at under 21st level, your modified leadership score gets uncapped allowing you to take advantage of the epic tables for numbers of followers.

That's actually not true.

[TypoNinja]

That's actually not true.

PoF pg. 154

A character’s base Leadership score is calculated as the sum of the character’s level plus any Charisma modifier, but that base Leadership score cannot exceed 25 unless the character has the Epic LeadershipEL feat.

The level of the cohort and the number of followers by level is determined by the character’s effective Leadership score, calculated as the sum of the base Leadership score plus any applicable modifiers

PoF pg. 155-156

As noted above, a character’s base Leadership score cannot exceed 25 unless that character has the Epic Leadership feat; however, in a slight variant from the core rules, this book assumes that the character’s effective Leadership score is unlimited.

Specifies Base leadership is the only score capped, specifies that Base is Level + Cha. So any other bonuses are not capped. Pretty straight forward.

[Morph Bark]

Does the DM allow you to pick your followers' races/classes?

I remember that for level 6 followers I had one Bard, one Artificer, one Wizard and one Archivist (thus having access to nearly all spells of levels 1-3 and cheap low-level magic items), level 5 I mostly had Bards and one Wu Jen, level 3 were Marshal 2/Dragon Shaman 1 and level 1 were a boatload of specialized characters. Most of them were Crusaders with Craft skills. A number of followers also took care of animals and trained them.

They maintained a library of spells and many subjects of Knowledge and stuff we had come to learn while adventuring, a spy network for gathering information and allow inside access to certain places, cheap gear, and in case it's really needed a pretty extensive army that gets a ton of buffs. (All the Bards had different types of Inspire Courage and had warhorns, granting them over a mile in range with Inspire Courage.)

I think at one point I also thought of encouraging one of them to open up an inn, so the party could stay somewhere for free and we'd have even easier access to information.

PoF pg. 155-156

Specifies Base leadership is the only score capped, specifies that Base is Level + Cha. So any other bonuses are not capped. Pretty straight forward.

Wait, what? What book is that?

It does mention it is "in a slight variant from the core rules" though.

[Darius Kane]

PoF pg. 154



PoF pg. 155-156



Specifies Base leadership is the only score capped, specifies that Base is Level + Cha. So any other bonuses are not capped. Pretty straight forward.

Um... that is just a houserule made specifically for this book because it was dealing extensively with Leadership and "Epic but not really" characters. This isn't really a general rule or anything like that. It clearly states that Leadership score is capped at 25 if you don't have Epic Leadership. Then it says that characters in this book ignore this rule, most probably for the sake of simplicity. They wanted to have some examples of NPCs with epic Leadership scores, but didn't want to make too many epic NPCs, is all.
So yeah, you still need Epic Leadership.

[herrhauptmann]

They wanted to have some examples of NPCs with epic Leadership scores, but didn't want to make too many epic NPCs, is all.
So yeah, you still need Epic Leadership.

Except that Power fo Faerun still created those epic NPCs. At least one NPC for each section (faith, market, political, war). The religion one, he was about 25th level, and still had a level 18 cohort. By the reputation rules they used, he took a hit for his religion based leadership because he was a heretic (had the feat heretic of the faith), which was balanced out a bit by various other things like finding an artifact of the faith, or performing a miracle in front of a thousands of witnesses.

And it's not really a houserule if it's in an official book.

[Radar]

One thing that wasn't mentioned here concerning item crafting: Distilled Joy spell from Book of Exalted Deeds. It's a 3rd level spell, which basicaly allows you to mass-produce crafting XP. There is a small problem with the long casting time and the spell's availability to NPC casters, but there is nothing traps and spellclocks can't solve.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Step 1: Develop a symbiotic relationship with extraplanar flowers. This lets you pick up Leadership for free. Alongside a whole host of other things. You will need Might Makes Right and Improved Cohort, though.

Step 2: Have your cohort also develop a symbiotic relationship with extraplanar flowers.

Step 3: Rinse and repeat, as the flowers can give you Leadership all the way down to ECL 2, your cohorts should also have both Improved and Might maked right. Your ECL 4 and 5 Cohorts should have Improved Cohort rather than Might Makes Right. Your ECL 3 Cohort can have a level 1 cohort.

Step 4: Have any follower that can be ECL 3 or higher ALSO develop symbiotic relationships with extraplanar flowers. For even more 1st level followers.

Enjoy your Hippie army.